Music Ally

There’s a lot of noise online about Apple being about to sign more major labels to sell DRM-free music through iTunes, joining EMI.

For example, CNET reports that Apple is in talks with all three other majors, and that one of them is close to a final agreement. Of course, all the major labels are now offering DRM-free MP3s with some other music stores - but holding out from Apple has allowed those competitor stores to make it a selling point.

Just how badly Apple needs DRM-free deals is a matter of some debate. iTunes risks becoming one of the last digital music retailers to sell DRM-free songs. However, the selling point of DRM-free files for rivals are ‘they work on iPods’, so Steve Jobs may not need to abandon his hardball stance just yet.

Following a report in the Wall Street Journal claiming that Apple’s senior VP of the iPod division was stepping down, Apple has issued a statement confirming the news, and that his replacement will be former IBM exec Mark Papermaster.

In fact, both Fadell and his wife Danielle Lambert (VP of human resources at Apple) are leaving the company, which the statement says is because they plan to “devote more time to their young family”. Fadell will remain as an adviser to CEO Steve Jobs, while Lambert will leave at the end of this year, once her replacement has been found.

“Mark is a seasoned leader and is going to be an excellent addition to our senior management team,” says Jobs. “Tony and Dani have each made important contributions to Apple over the past eight years. We’re sorry to see Dani go, and are looking forward to working with Tony in his new capacity.”

Papermaster’s role is an interesting one. Analysts have been predicting a slowdown in iPod sales for some time, yet the devices continue to perform strongly - and have been rejuvenated by the iPod Touch in recent times. How the iPod evolves from here, and the impact on it of iPhone, will be intriguing to watch.

UPDATE: It looks like IBM and Apple may be heading to court over the poaching of Papermaster, judging by this story on CNET. IBM is apparently suing him to prevent him from joining Apple and giving up power chip and server trade secrets.

“Mr. Papermaster’s employment by Apple is a violation of his agreement with IBM against working for a competitor should he leave IBM. We will vigorously pursue this case in court,” says a statement from IBM.

Some last odds and ends to mop up from Apple’s Let’s Rock product launch tonight, although we’ll spare you our thoughts on Jack Johnson’s guest slot.

Steve Jobs announced version 2.1 of the iPhone firmware, which if you’ve been struggling with a crashing 3G iPhone, is a pretty big deal. Jobs stressed it was a major update, fixing “lots of bugs”, sorting out dropped-calls issues, and improving the device’s battery life.

It’s available for download this Friday, which should give Apple’s servers another decent stress-test. There was no mention of the Genius music recommendation technology debuted earlier at tonight’s event. But given it’s being built into the new iPod Touch and iPod Nano, it would be strange if it wasn’t also in v2.1 of the iPhone firmware.

Meanwhile, Jobs revealed that more than 100 million applications have now been downloaded from the App Store, for iPhone and iPod Touch. He didn’t break down that figure into free or paid-for apps, or by genre.

However, it’s fair to assume that games were a big factor, since the only two iPhone apps to be demonstrated on-stage at the Let’s Rock event were games. Indeed, Jobs claimed the iPod Touch is now “the best portable device for playing games on”.

Apple clearly now wants to do to Nintendo’s DS and Sony’s PSP what it did to the latter company’s Walkman in the portable music space. Intriguing times.

Oh, well then. There were no super-secret surprises at Apple’s Let’s Rock event tonight after all. The final product launch was, as predicted, a new slightly-modified iPod Touch.

It’s thinner, with a stainless-steel exterior, and volume buttons on the side, bringing it into line with the iPhone. Apple’s new Genius recommendation tech is built in for playlist construction on the go, and the Nike+ fitness technology is built in.

Good for joggers, then. It’ll come in 8GB, 16GB and 32GB models, costing $229, $299 and $399 respectively - all available from today.

Apple’s ‘Let’s Rock’ product launch tonight is so far delivering pretty much what the online gossip suggested. Steve Jobs unveiled the fourth-generation iPod Nano, for example, which he trumpeted as the thinnest iPod ever.

The player has a bigger screen than before, with a curvier shape. It also has the same accelerometer as the iPhone and iPod Touch, allowing users to turn it sideways and browse albums using Apple’s Cover Flow user interface. Oh, and you can shake to shuffle, which is nice.

The Genius recommendation technology (covered here earlier) is also in the new Nano, allowing you to have playlists built for you on the fly. The device offers a claimed battery life of 24 hours for music, and four hours for video, and will come in 8GB and 16GB models, costing $149 and $199 respectively.

Right now, Apple is holding its ‘Let’s Rock’ product launch in California. One of the first things to be announced was iTunes 8, and as predicted, it includes new recommendation technology called Genius.

Its aim is to “help you rediscover music in your library” according to Steve Jobs, although flogging more songs through the iTunes Store is, naturally, part and parcel of it.

On-stage at the event, he explained that Genius works by matching the current song you’re playing in iTunes to up to 100 recommendations from the iTunes Store, with results being adapted to the overall content of your iTunes library.

Apple has offered iTunes recommendations before, but this is a real step forwards technically. It remains to be seen whether consumers will kick back over potential privacy issues – presumably the feature can be turned off.

Apple invented the iPod, right? Er, not quite. In fact, even Apple is seemingly hailing a British engineer called Kane Kramer as its true father. In 1979, he invented a device called IXI that could store and play back three and a half minutes of music. He patented it, but never managed to actually sell it, running out of funding by 1988, when the patents expired. So why is Apple now crediting him? Well, it called Kramer as a witness in a patent infringement case filed against Apple by a company called Burst, which said it invented the first iPod. The case was subsequently settled out of court, while Kramer says he’s now enjoying his moment in the limelight. There’s already a Facebook petition demanding Apple buy him a Ferrari.

It’s been a while since the last ‘labels hate iTunes’ rumour, but the Wall Street Journal has kicked off the speculation again, focusing on the labels’ desire to sell full albums, rather than break them up into individual tracks.

Apparently the 1.6 million sales of Kid Rock’s ‘Rock’n’Roll Jesus’ album in the US – despite not being available on iTunes – is stiffening labels’ resolve to focus more on other retailers and distribution channels.

The WSJ also says that Kid Rock’s label Atlantic (part of WMG) has just pulled the latest album by Estelle from iTunes, four months after it went on sale there. Why? A strategy “uniquely tailored to each artist and their fan base in an effort to optimize revenues and promote long-term artist development”, apparently.

How much life is there beyond iTunes, and are we likely to see more labels pulling their big albums from Apple’s store? Let us know your views by posting a comment.

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